The invention relates generally to forming and repair of workpieces in a manufacturing environment and, more specifically, to forming and repair of high precision metal parts.
Various types of metal structures, used in a range of commercial, industrial and consumer applications are made by deformation under an applied load. Certain such structures may be repaired in similar remanufacturing operations. For example, engine blades in aircraft engines are manufactured to high and stringent tolerances to ensure high quality performance of the engine. Engine blades may be deformed as a result of loading such as, thermal stress, external collision and so forth. Such deformation in the blades may include for example, bending and twisting in operations similar to forging or other plastic deformation processes.
As a result, various types of precision forming and repair techniques have been developed to make and repair these workpieces with a high level of accuracy. In some conventional practices, a workpiece blank is formed, and the blank is manually or semiautomatically bent or twisted. Such operations may be repeated both for original manufacture and to repair the workpiece. Such techniques are time consuming and require highly skilled workers to achieve the desired level of accuracy. Certain other methods employ pressing the workpiece in a warm die and holding it for a sufficiently long time to achieve the desired shape. Such techniques may result in having a spring back effect in the workpiece that limits the accuracy of the repair of the workpiece.
In certain other conventional repair and forming techniques, for example in sheet metal forming, electromagnetic pressure forming has been employed for repairing and forming a workpiece. Such processes generally rapidly accelerate a workpiece blank under the influence of a strong electromagnetic field. The utility of electromagnetic pressure forming for workpiece manufacture and repair is typically limited to high conductivity materials because the forming efficiency for the low conductivity metals is very low owing to the inability to accelerate such materials via the field. Certain other techniques use integration of low rate and high rate forming methods but such techniques require manufacturing of dies for each production cycle, as the dies must necessarily conform to the shape of the workpiece and therefore the same die cannot be used for different workpieces.
Therefore, it would be desirable to develop a technique that enables a workpiece to be formed and repaired in a more efficient manner. More specifically, it would be desirable to have an efficient forming and repair technique that permit precision workpiece forming and repair while having adaptability for a wider range of workpieces.